Jeff Jackson got bumped from his guide trip on Montana’s Big Horn River last spring. The disappointment lasted a few months, then evaporated in dramatic fashion.

On an October return to a celebrated stream that had fallen on hard times of late, the Littleton resident found the Big Horn at its blue-ribbon best.

“It may have something to do with the season, but it also could have been the effects of fishing the day before a storm rolled in,” Jackson said of a barometric condition that often propels fish into a feeding frenzy.

“Each of us must have caught 50 or more fish that day,” he said of the rush experienced by him and his boat partner, Howard Zucker of Centennial. “You lose track. It was spectacular. I couldn’t believe it.”

Most of the fish were 16-18 inches, Jackson said. The best of the trip came the day after the storm, when he landed a heavy 23-inch rainbow.

While this success certainly was out of the ordinary, Jackson believes it’s indicative of a rebound for a river that suffered badly from drought during the first years of the decade.

“We’ve been going up for the last five years and it’s gotten better every year,” Jackson said. “At first, we were catching quite a few, but they were small. They keep getting bigger and bigger.”

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